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Ronald Reagan in 2016: the Ys Mbolic and Political Uses of Collective Memory Alex Plant

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Ronald Reagan in 2016: the Ys Mbolic and Political Uses of Collective Memory Alex Plant University of Puget Sound Sound Ideas Politics & Government Undergraduate Theses Fall 2015 Ronald Reagan in 2016: The yS mbolic and Political Uses of Collective Memory Alex Plant Follow this and additional works at: http://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/pg_theses Part of the American Politics Commons, and the Political History Commons Recommended Citation Plant, Alex, "Ronald Reagan in 2016: The yS mbolic and Political Uses of Collective Memory" (2015). Politics & Government Undergraduate Theses. Paper 2. This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Sound Ideas. It has been accepted for inclusion in Politics & Government Undergraduate Theses by an authorized administrator of Sound Ideas. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Plant 1 Alex Plant Professor Haltom PG410 December 17, 2015 Ronald Reagan in 2016: The Symbolic and Political Uses of Collective Memory TAPPER: We have to take another quick break. Coming up, Ronald Reagan looming large over this debate. So how Reaganesque exactly are these Republicans? We will find out next.1 INTRODUCTION While not all references are as blatant as Donald Trump’s slogan, “Let’s Make America Great Again,” it is hard to deny that Ronald Reagan is everywhere in the 2016 Presidential campaign. Whether it is the Republican primary debate in front of his Air Force One, Jeb Bush’s “Reagan-Bush 80” t-shirt, or the frequent rhetorical evocations by the candidates, it is hard to miss Reagan’s shadow hanging over the Republican candidates, their policies, and their visions for America. Ronald Reagan’s son, Ron, recently expressed his distaste with the candidate’s prevalent use of his father’s legacy: It just gets old. It seems to me to be kind of an obvious angle to take, because the Republicans keep bringing up my father and they have for a long time. It’s for pretty obvious reasons. Who else do the Republicans have who they can hold up as a hero? I mean, unless you want to go back to Abraham Lincoln. And they may not have that much affinity for him! It’s not going to be Nixon. It’s not going to be H.W. Bush. It’s not going to be W either, for various reasons. So it’s my father. He’s their touchstone. He’s their fetish. They’ve all got to sort of genuflect to him.2 As evidenced by this campaign, and as Ron Reagan suggests, Reagan is the benchmark— perhaps even the “fetish”—that informs much of the Republican candidates’ rhetoric at the very least. But how exactly are these candidates using Ronald Reagan? What kind of role do these 1 Jake Tapper in “Transcript: Read the Full Text of the Second Republican Debate,” Time, September 16, 2015, http://time.com/4037239/second-republican-debate-transcript-cnn/ 2 Ron Reagan in Elizabeth F. Ralph, “’Look in the Mirror, Fat Boy’: Ronald Reagan’s Sons Discuss Donald Trump and 2016,” Politico, September 16, 2015, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/09/reagan-sons- interview-donald-trump-213149 Plant 2 references play in overall campaign strategy? What can this study reveal about the use of historical figures in modern day politics? This paper will take up these questions and analyze the rhetorical use of Reagan in the 2016 Republican Primary thus far. Before embarking on this study, I had three initial hypotheses. One, I assumed that the Republicans were using Reagan to achieve some sense of credibility with their parties and constituents. Two, I anticipated that the candidates would be competing for ownership of Ronald Reagan. In other words, to borrow from classics scholar, Jeremy McInerney, I believed that we would see each of the candidates creating a Reagan to suit his or her “own tastes.”3 Third, I also assumed that these references would primarily be symbolic in nature, lacking any real specificity or substantial content. Of these three, only the first hypothesis about credibility held true. As far as ownership, the candidates did not disagree too much over the details of Reagan’s legacy, nor challenge his collective memory as it is mostly accepted. And most interesting of all, as opposed to staying within the realm of symbolism, instead, what I found was that the majority of the candidates are attempting to extrapolate policy and credibility from a collective memory that is entirely composed of myth and symbolism. By doing so, not only are they misunderstanding the state of Reagan’s collective memory, but they are opening themselves up to a range of historical and political problems, including presentism, fact-checking, party in-fighting, and potential costs for themselves as leaders and followers. First I will look at the literature on collective memory as a whole so that we can have a better understanding of the field before applying that work to Reagan specifically. Second, we will move to Reagan and examine the key commemorative events leading up to the present that have played a role the development of his legacy. Third, I will discuss my findings for how 3 Jeremy McInerney, “Arrian and the Greek Alexander Romance,” The Classical World, Vol. 100, No. 4 (Summer, 2007): 430. Plant 3 candidates are employing Reagan in the 2016 campaign thus far in relation to my three hypotheses. It is not my objective to be a fact-checker regarding the accuracy of their Reagan references. I am more concerned with how and why these candidates use Reagan, and what we can learn from examining his role in the rhetoric of the 2016 presidential campaign. Lastly, I will conclude with some comments on the implications of these findings for Reagan’s legacy, the candidates as potential leaders, the candidates as followers, and some comments on the pervasive role of historical symbolism on our politics. I. LITERATURE REVIEW: The Formation and Political Use of Collective Memory The scholarship on collective memory and how it is formed is quite prolific. Disciplines ranging from sociology to psychology have attempted to understand how, what, and why societies remember. Collective memory, best defined as the memory of historical events shared by a group of people, can take many forms. As Barbie Zelizer explains, “In Bernard Lewis’ work, for instance, we hear of ‘remembered history’—that roughly equivalent to collective memory; ‘recovered history’—that recuperated from an earlier rejection by the collective memory; or ‘invented history’—history with a purpose, whether it be devised, interpreted, or fabricated.”4 A key component of all of these definitions, especially of “invented history,” is the fact that history and historical figures are removed from their original context and placed in the present or even the future. Collective memory and history are intertwined and share an interesting relationship. Charles Scott examines the root of the word “memory” itself, which “has in its history the ancient Greek word mermeros, ‘care for’ something losable…When something happens in memory, it is presented in the absence of its original presence.”5 While collective 4 Barbie Zelizer, “Reading the Past against the Grain: The Shape of Memory Studies,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 12 (1995): pp.214–39, 216. 5 Charles E. Scott, “The Appearance of Public Memory,” in Kendall R, Phillips, Stephen Browne, and Barbara Biesecker, Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique: Framing Public Memory (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Plant 4 memory for societies is rooted in our remembrance of past events, bringing it into the present context causes loss for the original history, one of the historical problems candidates face. Furthermore, it is this loss that allows for the possibility of appropriation and manipulation for political purposes. Considering that collective memory is inherently a group exercise, it is important to understand how collective memory is constructed and remembered in public. Kendall Phillips explains the importance of publicness in the formation of collective memory: “To speak of public memory as the memory of publics is to speak of more than many individuals remembering the same thing. It is to speak of a remembrance together, indeed, of remembrance together as a crucial aspect of our togetherness, our existence as a public.”6 The sense of publicness allows for groups to share in the experience of the memory and to establish a sense of coherence through their remembrance. This publicness results in a unique opportunity for public memory to be utilized, formed, and changed. Shawn and Trevor Parry-Giles differentiate this experience from private recollections, writing, “Unlike individual memory, which is often only present in thought or confined to documents reserved for private consumption, collective memory is public, it is the publicity of collective memory that establishes its political/rhetorical power.”7 The nature of that power involves the ability to change this public perception of whatever history is being constructed, and also to use it for political ends. The public forum inherently provides the opportunity for guidance and manipulation of what groups remember— Press, 2004), pp. 147-156, ProQuest ebrary, http://site.ebrary.com/lib/pugetsound/reader.action?docID=10309041, 150. 6 Kendall R. Phillips, “Introduction” in Kendall R, Phillips, Stephen Browne, and Barbara Biesecker, Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique: Framing Public Memory (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004), pp.1-16, ProQuest ebrary, http://site.ebrary.com/lib/pugetsound/reader.action?docID=10309041, 4. 7 Shawn J. Parry-Giles and Trevor Parry-Giles, “Collective Memory, Political Nostalgia, and the Rhetorical Presidency: Bill Clinton’s Commemoration of the March on Washington, August 28, 1998,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol. 68, No. 4, (November 2000): pp.417-437, 418. Plant 5 using the bully pulpit, if you will—a strategy that has only increased in influence with the ever more important role of the media and public appeals in politics.8 The sense of publicness also translates to how collective memory is formed and changed through a process called commemoration.
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